Monday News

May 13, 2013

The children were excited to begin their morning working on their journals. Weekend News has become a favorite spot on Monday mornings and the children are eager to share their experiences and adventures they have had with their families over the weekend with each other.

As the children are developing reading readiness skills where they are able to discriminate the different sounds of words and are beginning to make letter sound connections, we are observing beginning kid writing. Story dictations continue to support language development and literacy skills and the children enjoy sharing their ideas  during this time.

The beginning literacy continued after journals with children working with magnet boards and letters trying out different combinations of letters to create words.

The rest of our classroom was experiencing amazing imaginative play this morning. The kitchen area began to resemble a shop as the children made use of a cash register prop. This has been the first step to converting some of our classroom space into our goal of a flower shop.

The magnet tiles had an interesting group of structures being built, and the builders seemed very comfortable with friends stopping by to admire or add their own ideas and moving on.

These comfortable social interactions were happening in other sections as well, as groups gathered to dress up and create dramatic play scenarios focused on the family unit, and everyday experiences of families. Some friends shared new games they had played over the weekend with their families as well.

There were paintings being created in the art studio, as well as the very beginning steps of tracing and cutting out shapes for a large art project we are planning on starting soon.

Wednesday News

February 6, 2013

We visited the library this morning and had the opportunity to look around the library and listen to a story about one of our favorite characters; Tacky. We read  one of the books from the Tacky series and the children enjoyed the story so much that they requested that we bring a few more books from this series back to our classroom. Before going to the library we decided that we would look on the library shelves to see if we could find a few more of the books in the math series we started yesterday- The Greedy Triangle.  Unfortunately we were not able to find the other math books but will continue to look elsewhere.

The children have developed really amazing listening skills. The love hearing books read aloud and their skill in larger group listening skills has grown tremendously throughout the year.  We are not engaging in thoughtful conversations as we are reading aloud and the children are becoming more attuned to answering inferential questions, factual question and are even beginning to make story predictions from factual information they are processing from the stories. These are very important reading readiness skills that develop as the children are exposed to read aloud experiences.

Self Portraits
What an incredible change in the children's drawings of themselves! Each month the children are asked to complete a self portrait drawing of themselves using colored pencil and multicultural crayons.  We offer mirrors at the drawing tables for the children to use as they wish and encourage the children to 'take their time' in completing their work.  The level of detail and attention that the children are now giving to this experience is so much more developed than at the beginning of the year.  We have collected the portraits each month and will send them home at the end of the year.

Author's Sharing
After playing outdoors on this chilly Wednesday morning in the Lower School playground, the children were very relaxed and settled and this seemed like a perfect time to introduce" Shared Author Time.."

We have noticed an increased interest in writing amongst all of the children over the past few weeks.  Journal writing/dictation has become much more elaborate. The stories are more imaginative and the sense of telling 'a story' is often more apparent as the dictations have a beginning, an end and sometimes even a middle! Children are identifying characters in their stories and some children are including the names of their classmates as the main characters! Yesterday, several children were involved in book making at the Writing Center. The children love listening to their stories read aloud to the group and seem to feel like this read aloud truly makes their story authentic.  Today we randomly selected a few journals to share with the group. It was absolutely fascinating to observe the children listening to each others' journal stories. They spontaneously asked thoughtful questions and were fully engaged in this very personal language experience. Needless to say, the author that had the opportunity to share their work felt much pride.

Number Recognition and Matching Games
During Choice Time today a small group played a number lotto game together. Through this activity the children  practiced several important math readiness skills such as  number recognition, 1:1 correspondence, visual discrimination and matching skills. The group was able to navigate the rules for the game handled simple tasks such taking turns with ease.

Creating, Constructing and Collaborating

     Creating, Constructing,Collaborating Cardinals

The children were incredibly involved in working with their hands this morning! After working on journals, several of the children gravitated to the table where a huge container of Lego's were placed. The Lego container was open and the children  were drawn to this area and immediately started to construct.  It was fascinating to observe how the different children approached this invitation. Some children seemed to have a 'plan' and carefully searched for a specific Lego piece or wheel , while others seemed to randomly select pieces to connect and were more interested in figuring out how pieces of Lego and different sizes connected and fit together.  The number of children working on the covered sand table top grew and instinctively, the children seemed to figure out how to move and work together without interfering with each other's work! What an amazing accomplishment for 3& 4 year old children! Some children started working on their own and then moved to working collaboratively on a more elaborate structure with a friend.

We invited the children to work on our beaded sculpture tower today and the children are getting really inventive in the way they are engaging with this experience. They are trying new ways to attach the pipe cleaners and are thinking about ways to bridge and connect parts together. The pipe cleaners are a wonderful material for the children to use as a extension of the sculpture.

Block building was sensational today!

The Cardinals are back in business...

Today the children were excited to return to school and they were eager and ready to dive into the classroom to talk, bond and play with their peers. Immediately, a group of Cardinals visited the library rug and started to look at a collection of books that had been displayed on the rug.  They chose their favorite books and snuggled up on the big comfy chair to read together! The joy and delight in seeing each other this morning was a reflection of the friendships and bonds that have evolved   throughout our classroom. What a fantastic way to re-enter the 2nd half of the school year!

Our building study took off just where we had left it as a few of us began to bring in our creations from the sticks and wooden shapes that were sent home. We invited the children to bring in their creations all this week to share with the class and help us begin to expand our discussion around buildings and see what other questions might arise. The spirit of building spread to different centers as well as children were seen cooperating in the Magna Tile center and working with goggles, hammers, nails, glue and wood in the studio area to create wood  structures. We also used skinny tubes and small connectors to create objects and representations.  For example, the children connected the long straws together to make numbers, structures, and carousels.  

 The group gathered together for a short Morning Meeting. We shared some experiences from Winter Break and some of our wooden sculptures. We  talked about the name of the new month and year and Paula showed us what the date looked like in print with letters and numbers!  The children are beginning to recognize sight words and they became very excited to accurately 'read' words from our chart paper!  The children take pride in their own growth and development and we feel so fortunate to be able to experience this joy with them in our classroom.  The children especially loved when we kept saying, " Did we walk into the wrong classroom ? Is this really the kindergarten class?"

Also at Morning Meeting, a new cooperative art project was introduced with colorful wastebaskets, beads and pipe cleaners. The children worked side by side as they experimented with the layout of each piece and discovered ways to connect each of the baskets  using pipe cleaners as an attaching tool. Once they had a sturdy structure with multiple levels, the children showed impressive fine motor coordination as they began adding details to each pipe cleaner with beads. This interest was seen at the table and on the rug as groups of children traveled back and forth, cooperating and showing patience with their careful placement of each new piece.

After enjoying our Choice Time and spending some time exploring outside in the welcoming sunny weather, we closed our morning together with journal writing. We sat down to talk about special experiences, visits, and happenings over Winter Break. Then, we sat down at the table and began drawing pictures of our winter break experiences. After our drawings were complete, we dictated our stories to the teachers. We had a wonderful morning together reconnecting with each other and continuing to express ourselves through conversations, interactions and play. Welcome back in the New Year 2013!